12 April 2017

by David Edgerley GatesOnce again, a disclaimer. This post isn't political comment, but thinking out loud about the spycraft involved. Nor do I claim special knowledge. It's pure speculation.

If you're one of the people following what Rick Wilson of The Daily Beast has characterized as "the Trump-Russia intelligence and influence scandal," you can be forgiven for experiencing a certain bemusement. The story keeps wandering off-narrative, the cast doesn't know their lines, the whole thing is like a dress rehearsal for the school play. Lucian K. Truscott IV, writing for SALON, sounds a note of gleeful despair, trying to strike a balance between the giddy anarchy of a Three Stooges routine and the jaws of darkness yawning open beneath our feet. You don't have to take sides to take it seriously, but it has an unreal quality. Farce, caricature, exaggeration of effect, clown noses and oversized shoes. What would a working intelligence professional make of all this? If we discount the attitude, and the partisanship, and the Whose-Ox-Is-Being-Gored, and focus on the basic operational dynamics - the tradecraft of recruitment, the servicing of resources, the value of the product - does it show any return on the investment? What's our cost-benefit ratio?Security operations are often graded on the curve. You might have a downside risk, but if you're blown, the exposure is quantifiable. It's worth losing X to acquire Y. Penetrations are always high-value. Getting someone inside. Philby and Blake. Gunter Guillaume. Alger Hiss. Penkovsky. It's a tightrope act for the spy, of course. For his handlers, not so much. Embarrassment, contrition, crocodile tears. Deep-cover assets understand their vulnerability. It's a buyer's market. You're only as good as your last picture. So forth and so on. The point here being that a penetration is usually considered well worth the money, the extra effort, the aggravation. Any rewards justify the sweat equity. But defectors are known to inflate their resumes. They give themselves better credentials, they claim better access. Another thing to remember is that the more difficult the courtship, and the more it costs, the more highly you value the object of your desire. In other words, we both want to close the sale. It's to our mutual advantage. And who's to say there isn't as much wishful thinking on the one side as on the other?Intelligence consumers want what's known in the trade as collateral, telling detail that gives your product a material weight, the force of gravity. What we've got here is disconnect. Peripheral vision, low light. Manafort is compromised because he was a bagman for Yanukovych. Kushner met with VneshEconomBank chair Gorkov, and VEB launders dirty money for the Kremlin. Flynn broke bread with Putin at a meet-and-greet sponsored by RT. Page and Stone were coat-trailed by SVR. All of it suggestive, none of it at all imperative.There's a moment in Smiley'sPeople, about a third of the way through, when George learns that Karla is "looking for a legend, for a girl." This is the place where the story - the story within, the hidden narrative - begins to shape itself. George first hears that voice, and we're taken into his confidence, and feel its muscularity, and the book turns a corner (its secret just around the next one). How do we apply the comforts of a fiction? We suppose not, but hold the phone. The absence of structure tells us something. We're used to the idea of conspiracy, plots laid, inductions devious. I'd suggest this wasn't a concerted effort. Not at either end. I think the Russian services went after targets of opportunity. Putin's an old KGB guy of course, but he seems to have buried the hatchet with GRU. He's made extensive use of both, in Crimea and the Donbass. Russian information warfare strategy has also been formalized. Kaspersky Lab, which on paper is private sector, works in cybersecurity. Once upon a time, this was all under the authority of the Organs, the state apparat, but the chain of command is more flexible. I'm guessing an approach to an American or European businessman could be made by anybody, sanctioned or not. Is it corporate espionage, or government? What's the difference? you might ask. If you're shaking hands with the siloviki, the oligarchs, you're already in bed with the Mafia and state security. It's not at all difficult to imagine a guy like Paul Manafort being recruited, because he'd be recruiting talent himself, working both sides of the street. He's cultivating influence, that's his currency. So let's say we see this happen with other examples. No grand design or discipline, just low-hanging fruit.Moving ahead, we get to the past summer of an election year, 2016, and evidence of Russian e-mail hacking. We know the FBI opened their investigation in July, and it's now being reported that CIA began briefing the Gang of Eight - the senior majority and minority leaders in the House and Senate, and on the intelligence committees - in mid-August. Slight cognitive dissonance, as the Bureau believed the Russian threat was meant only to disrupt the political process in general, CIA believed it was specifically focused on sabotaging the Clinton campaign and electing Trump. CIA suspects active collusion.What are the basics? We know any intelligence community is top-heavy with turf warriors. MI5 and MI6. FBI and CIA. SVR and FSB and GRU. But there was a trigger mechanism. My guess is that a ranking somebody in the Russian spy orbits took notice and pulled the various threads together. We imagine frustrations expressed at the top of the food chain, "Who will rid me of this tempestuous priest?" And the barons mount up. I'm also thinking this was as much accident as anything else. The necessary tools were ready to hand. All it required was an organizing principle. The rest is housekeeping, who carried the water.One last observation. The feckless and the foolish are easily led. You play to their vanities, their limitless self-regard. it's never truer than in the spook trade that you can't cheat an honest man.

08 March 2017

by David Edgerley GatesAgain, first off, a disclaimer. This is not a political rant any more than my previous post. Last time, I went after Michael Flynn for his lack of deportment. This time, I'm inviting you into the Twilight Zone. We have a habit, in this country, of thinking we're the center of attention. In other words, Trump's issues with his Russian connections are all about American domestic politics. There's another way to look at this. What if it turns out to be about Russian domestic politics?

Bear with me. Filling in the background, we have Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This appears not to be in dispute. There's a consensus in the intelligence community. Fairly obviously, Hillary Clinton wasn't the Russians' first choice, and she seems to have inspired Vladmir Putin's personal animus. It's not clear whether the Russians wanted simply to weaken Clinton's credibility and present her with an uncertain victory or if they thought they could engineer her actual defeat.

Deception and disinformation are tools of long standing. Everybody uses them, and the Russians have a lot of practice. They've in fact just announced the roll-out of a new integrated platform for Information Warfare, and under military authority (not, interestingly, the successor agencies to KGB). Their continuing success in controlling the narrative on the ground in both Ukraine and Syria, less so in the Caucasus, demonstrates a fairly sophisticated skill-set. To some degree, it relies on critical mass, repeating the same lies or half-truths until they crowd out the facts. Even if they don't, the facts become suspect.Now, since the Inauguration, we've had a steady erosion of the established narrative. Beginning with Gen. Flynn, then Sessions, former adviser Page Carter, Jared Kushner. Consider the timeline. Nobody can get out in front of the story, because the hits just keep coming. They're being blind-sided. "They did make love to this employment," Hamlet says, and none of them seem to realize they could be fall guys, or that it's not about them.The most basic question a good lawyer can ask is cuibono. Who benefits? If the object was to have a White House friendlier to the Kremlin than the one before, that doesn't appear to be working out. But perhaps the idea is simply to have an administration in disarray, one that can't cohesively and coherently address problems in NATO, say, or the Pacific Rim. Short-term gain. Maybe more.

Let's suppose somebody is playing a longer game. We have a story out of Russia about the recent arrests of the director of the Center for Information Security, a division of the Federal Security Service, and the senior computer incident investigator at the Kaspersky Lab, a private company believed to be under FSB discipline - both of them for espionage, accused of being American assets, but both of them could just as plausibly be involved in the U.S. election hack. What to make of it? Loose ends, possibly. Circling the wagons. Half a dozen people have dropped dead or dropped out of sight lately, former security service personnel, a couple of diplomats. Russians have always been conspiracy-minded, and it's catching. You can't help but think the body count's a little too convenient, or sort of a collective memory loss.Here's my thought. This slow leakage and loss of traction, the outing of Flynn and Sessions and the others - and waiting for more shoes to drop - why do we necessarily imagine this has to come from the inside? Old rivalries in the intelligence community, or Spec Ops, lifer spooks who didn't like Mike Flynn then and resented his being booked for a return engagement later. Just because you want to believe a story badly doesn't make it false. But how about this, what if the leaks are coming from Russian sources?Remove yourself from the equation. It's not about kneecapping Trump, it's about getting rid of Putin, and Trump is collateral damage. There are factions in Russia that think Putin has gotten too big for his britches. He's set himself up as the reincarnation of Stalin. And not some new Stalin, either. The old Stalin. None of these guys are reformers, mind you, they're siloviki, predators. They just want to get close enough with the knives, and this is protective coloration. Putin, no dummy he, is apparently eliminating collaborators and witnesses at home, but somebody else is working the other side of the board.

If the new administration comes near collapse, because too many close Trump associates are tarred with the Russian brush, the strategy's going to backfire, and the pendulum will swing the other way. The scenario then has the opposite effect of what was intended. Putin will have overreached himself, embarrassed Russia, and jeopardized their national security. That's the way I'd play it, if it were me, but I'm not the one planning a coup.This is of course utterly far-fetched, and I'm an obvious paranoid. Oh, there's someone at the door. Must be my new Bulgarian pal, the umbrella salesman.

18 January 2017

I hope you have all donned your tuxes and/or gowns, because I am about to announce the best short mystery stories of the year. Prepare to watch the winners sashaying down the red carpet and smirking at the paparazzi.

This is the eighth year I have conducted this ceremony. I regret to say 2016 was not as good as 2015 (insert political joke here), since the number of stories dropped from 14 to 13.

Seven authors were men, six female. The big winner was Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine with four stories. Ellery Queen scored three and Crime Plus Music, an anthology from Three Rooms Press nabbed two. Five stories are historic fiction. Three are (loosely speaking) comic.

The biggest surprise may be that there were no repeat offenders: none of these authors had made my best-of lists before. One SleuthSayer is included, as is one first story.

Addendum: I should have mentioned that slightly longer reviews of these stories can be found at my weekly review site, Little Big Crimes.

Okay. Start the show!

Barnes, Linda. "The Way They Do It In Boston," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2016.

Veteran Drew wants to be a cop in Boston but it's hard to make the
resident-for-a-year requirement when you are living in your car with
your only friend, a beat-up ex-army dog.

So she's working night security on a tow service parking lot, down by
the river. One night a crate of assault weapons washes up on the
shore. Something bad is going on. Does it involve the lot? Can she
survive long enough to find out?

Congressman
John Fuller left his wife for his secretary. Said wife did not take it
well. Now she has plotted an elaborate revenge, and Fuller's future
depends on the shrewdness and determination of an overworked cop named
Pinski who just wants to spend some time with own wife.

If
this description sounds a little sparse, you are right. I don't want
to give away any of the secrets of this marvelous, convoluted plot.

Picture a small town in Texas, one so set
in its ways that the whites and blacks still use seperate cemeteries.
Cody is a gay man, deep in the closet. His secret lover, Chase, on the
other hand, was "leading one-man Gay Pride parades." When Chase disappears, Cody has to decide what is more important: finding out the truth, or staying safe?

1960, East Berlin. Our protagonist has been shot in the head, a grazing blow that erased most of his memory. The cops want to know what happened and the deadly secret police, the Stasi, are lurking on the sidelines, up to God knows what. Will our hero figure out who he is before the shooter realizes he is still alive and tries again?

Teenage Douglas has come up with the perfect place to sell drugs: his church's youth group. Pastor Jerry loves his enthusiasm and has no clue about what's going on... or what Douglas is doing with his young daughter. What I love about this story is that is is full of classic noir characters, but they don't all follow the noir rules, and their choices may surprise you. Very nice piece of work.

McCormick, William Buron. "Voices in the Cistern," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 2016.

This
is McCormick's second story about Quintus the Clever, a thief in the
early days of the Roman empire. And Quintus is having a bad day.

It
isn't enough that he is in a city under siege by the Roman's deadly
Scythian enemies. No, he also has to deal with Vibius, a large, nasty,
unscrupulous rogue. The brute has decided Quintus is the perfect
co-conspirator to help him with a dangerous scheme. The last person
involved was actually killed by, uh, Vibius. What could go wrong?

Jess lives with relatives because, a decade ago when she was four years
old, her mother murdered her father. That's the official story, but it
turns out the truth is a lot more complicated. "There are worse things
to be in small-town America than the daughter of a murderess," says her
caretaker. "So I hold my tongue and settle for silence."

A nice story in the P.I. vein by my friend Terrie Farley Moran. New
York City, the Great Depression. Tommy Flood, unemployed bookkeeper is
looking desperately for work, and surviving through family ties.

And
speaking of family, he gets an invitation from Van Helden, the wealthy
man who employs his cousin Kathleen. He has a dangerously wild
daughter, and Van Helden has decided the solution is to find an
attractive but tame gentleman to escort her safely to the risky sorts of
establishments she enjoys. Tommy
meets the daughter by pretending to be a private eye. And guess what?
Turns out he's good at it...

Rogers, Cheryl. "The Ballad of Maggie Carson," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 2016. A real sui generis tale. Maggie Carson, newly unmarried senior citizen, is racing through the Australian Never-Never with a lifeless body in her car. A retired police officer is on her trail. And why, in such circumstances, is she so cheerful?

At Nikola Tesla's funeral an aging
politician decides to entertain the gathered reporters with the true story of the great inventor's first day in America. We know that Tesla was robbed on the ship and stepped onto dry land with
four cents in his pocket. The official version says that he then met a
man on the street with a broken machine and fixed it on the spot,
thereby earning his first dollar on these shores. But our politician's version involves a pool hall, a gang of
street toughs, and Tammany Hall.

When was the last time you read a story written in first person plural? The narrator is we, the collective voice of an over-the-hill rock band. After a gig the
band's equipment (including the titular guitar) is stolen but "we
couldn't call the police because one of us was supposed to be home with
an ankle monitor strapped to our leg." Hilarious.

Stevens, B.K. "The Last Blue Glass," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, April 2016.

My
fellow SleuthSayer B.K. Stevens has come up with a nice one. Cathy and Frank buy the titular set of
six blue glasses as they are preparing for their first dinner party.
They are a bit fragile and expensive but Frank loves them and Cathy
tends to go along with what he wants, which turns out to be a piece of the
problem in their marriage, a marriage we see falling to pieces like, well, a set of blue glasses.

In
his first published story (!) Mark Thielman makes 1661 London come to life. King Charles II had just taken the
throne and anyone who had been on the Roundhead side in the Civil War,
or sided with Cromwell after, had to keep one eye over his shoulder,
expecting arrest or worse.

One of those was the blind poet John Milton, not yet the creator of Paradise Lost. The narrator of the novella is Milton's younger friend, Andrew Marvell, who was both a member of Parliament and a poet. When a royalist member of Parliament is killed in circumstances that suggest a possible political motive big trouble is afoot, unless Milton can get to the bottom of it.